Canadian art and stories – through a distinctly Canadian art experience.
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection offers its visitors a unique and truly Canadian experience. From the art within its walls to the surrounding landscape, the McMichael is the perfect gallery for an introduction to Canada’s art, its peoples, their cultures and their history.
Renowned for its devotion to collecting and exhibiting only Canadian art, the McMichael permanent collection consists of almost 6,000 artworks by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, their contemporaries, and First Nations, Inuit and other artists who have made a contribution to Canada’s artistic heritage.
The gallery welcomes on average 120,000 visitors annually.
100% Canadian Content
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is the only major public art gallery devoted solely to the collecting and exhibiting of Canadian art. The gallery offers visitors the unique opportunity to enjoy Canadian landscape paintings in the woodland setting that inspired them.
Built of fieldstone and hand-hewn logs, the McMichael houses thirteen exhibition galleries and is situated amid 100 acres of serene conservation land. Floor-to-ceiling windows enable visitors to enjoy marvellous views of the densely wooded Humber River Valley.
Through a network of outdoor paths and hiking trails, visitors can discover outdoor sculptures and wander the McMichael Cemetery where six Group of Seven members and gallery co-founders Robert and Signe McMichael have been laid to rest.
See. Do. Discover.
The McMichael displays a wide range of exhibitions each year, and offers a stimulating array of programs and events for people of all ages. They include curators’ lectures, tours, music performances, kids’ camps, workshops, school programs and hands-on art activities.
Experience Canada in a day at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
A Word from Our Executive Director
Ninety years ago, a small group of talented, ambitious, bold and defiant artists in Toronto set about to make a difference. They were adept, having studied art with a keen and purposeful interest. Their knowledge, spanning many eras and movements, comprised a deep understanding of the new languages and modes of painting. The world that they knew was radically changing, and Canada was finding its voice as a nation. They turned to the land to express their ideas, and for a few years the international winds of modernism blew across the striations of the Canadian Shield and through the white pine forests of Algonquin Park, and were captured by these artists dubbed the “Group of Seven.”
Their impact on Canadian art and the nation and on the development of modernism was profound. They not only expressed a national ethos, but also showed how international modernism could be conscripted to interpret the Canadian experience and the poetry of a people. The Group helped to define the aspirations of a young nation and inspire generations to see in the land values that transcended place and time, yet also expressed the very particularities of place.
Robert and Signe McMichael came under the Group of Seven’s spell. They devoted their lives to collecting works of art from these artists, their contemporaries, and from many of the best Canadian artists of the twentieth century who found timeless values in the land and people.
This year, the McMichael celebrates the remarkable legacy of the Group of Seven in a number of noteworthy projects; among them, the exceptional new installation of our renowned permanent collection conceived by the McMichael’s new Chief Curator, Katerina Atanassova, and her curatorial team. The collection has been arrayed in our galleries in new and dynamic ways, opening up new themes and ideas for you to explore again and again.
Our collection is also now accessible online in our newly launched collections database (www.mcmichael-artdb.com) and innovative educational Web 2.0 project, Footprints: Legacy of the Group of Seven (www.groupofseven.ca) that combines many different modes and media to give renewed access to the collection and a fresh perspective on how it can change lives. I invite you to take the journey following in the footsteps of the Group and be transformed in the process!
And some more very exciting news—a recent announcement of Infrastructure Stimulus Funding was made at the McMichael on Friday, March 12 by the Honourable John Baird, Canada’s Transport and Infrastructure Minister and the Honourable Brad Duguid, Ontario Minister of Energy and Infrastructure. I am extremely pleased to inform you that during this announcement, the McMichael received confirmation that the Federal and Provincial governments will contribute $4.2 million towards our plans to enhance the gallery grounds and install an outdoor sculpture garden! Further details of this major project will be announced shortly.
I urge you to stay involved throughout the summer and fall as we continue to celebrate the life and times of this astonishing group of artists with the exhibition Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, guest curated by internationally acclaimed Canadian author, Ross King.
Visit the McMichael often and see how the impact of this
remarkable group of artists and collectors resonates as
powerfully today as it did ninety years ago.
Tom Smart
Executive Director and CEO
